


The End of the Line

by overcomewithlongingfora_girl



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: M/M, Short One Shot, prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-11
Updated: 2018-01-11
Packaged: 2019-03-03 10:31:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13339392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/overcomewithlongingfora_girl/pseuds/overcomewithlongingfora_girl
Summary: quick rewrite of That One Scene in Winter Soldier. you know the one, right at the end.





	The End of the Line

Rending metal fills the air with shrieking, alarms scream a death howl in your ears, and sparks and glass fly through the air. Windows burst like fireworks. And still, with all this noise, all this panic, you can hear him perfectly.  
His lips are moving, and he’s smiling, he’s saying someone’s name and he’s smiling like he knows you even though you’ve never...  
That voice, that voice, a sound that tugs at a part of your brain long dormant after years of frozen sleep. After pain and blood and electricity rewiring your brain until you’re someone else…and this is what brings you back. The man on the bridge.  
You know him.  
No, you don’t know him. He’s just your mission.  
But the blood running from between his lips makes your stomach boil. Whoever hurt him deserves to hurt back. Your human knuckles, blood and flesh and bone, ache for retribution.  
But he’s your mission. Kill him, hurt him, you’ve already lost so much. The entire ship tears itself to pieces around you. You’re hitting him again. Face pulled into a pained grimace, metal fingers smashing fragile bone.  
No resistance. Blue eyes struggle for yours; bloody lips work themselves into a smile that you almost – almost return. Even electricity can’t rewrite muscle memory. Years of ice and one grin melts him back into your memory.  
You know him. You know him, and you don’t want to hurt him.  
I’m with you, till the end of the line.  
Your head will split in two with the pain. Steel burns for blood to paint it red, heart beats too fast. It’s throwing itself against the walls of your ribs, bruising you inside out. A hundred missions, a million missions, you can’t remember anymore, with the sleep, and the pain, and the orders that you never never questioned before.  
The agony is everywhere, and it’s inside you. No fighting, no blows can stop you from wanting to tear yourself in two. Probably it’s been years since you last had emotions, but you feel now. You feel. You’re so afraid, and it hurts, in your heart and belly and brain.  
Nothing feels right. Hurt him and you wish you were holding him. Stop the blows and all you want to do is destroy that stupid smile. What is he smiling for? You’re killing him.  
Stop it, finish him, curl up in the corner and cry. The war inside your skull paralyzes you and there isn’t much time before the dying vessel makes your decision for you.  
The destruction reaches a crescendo. Everything around you is falling and failing, dropping into the water to end beneath the waves. It doesn’t sound so bad to you anymore. Falling into deep water, sinking as if into deep sleep, and the waves closing over your head to leave only ripples.  
Not such a bad end.  
You can’t kill him. It will destroy you.  
Disobeying orders will dig your grave just as quickly.  
Before you can decide he’s slipping through your fingers. That’s what does it, the feeling of losing him, the gut-wrenching sight of his limp body dropping through space. Now there’s a sickening rush of certainty, every part of you that’s still human is screaming, is pining: is in agony. Seventy years of grief slam into you like a semi and it isn’t long before you’re dropping after him.  
A boulder falls through space at the same rate as a penny and so the plummet takes an age. Below you, an explosion of white water gives way to a stream of bubbles that disappears all too quickly. The water approaches your field of vision.  
Falling. Falling. An explosion of white. Dark water.  
Unfeeling iron drags you down towards the black depths. Your own body pulls you deeper towards death with each powerful stroke downwards. And still you don’t know why. And still you don’t know who he is, even as the fabric of his suit brushes your fingers.  
You reach with your flesh hand, even though your steel hand is stronger. Something in you longs to feel his skin, the same part that aches with a fiery passion as you see him sinking.  
There isn’t much time, not for either of you. The thin stream of bubbles drizzling from his mouth has slowed, almost stopped. You haul him upwards, muscles straining against the dead weight of his limp, waterlogged body.  
Then you hug him to your chest, and ignore how his skin feels hot against yours, and how his heartbeat reverberates in your ribs alongside your own.  
Then you reach up with the metal arm they gave you, and you use it to save the man they sent you to kill.  
The surface remains tantalizingly far away. The swimming isn’t easy. The rational part of you, the them part of you, the part of you that’s steel and electricity, order and winter, tells you to let him go. And still, you don’t.  
Still, you will kill yourself trying to save him. Your muscles refuse you, your very bones tell you otherwise, and even if your poor broken brain doesn’t understand it yet, you hold him, and you save him, and you swim.  
As your vision goes hazy, from the fighting and the blows and the oxygen deprivation, you drag yourself on shore and him with you.  
Now, though, you lay him out carefully across the dirt, watch his chest rise and fall fitfully. When you know he’ll live, you start up the slope, away from him.  
You might love him – no, you do love him, you know that. It’s impossible to pretend anything else, whether you know him or not.  
So, you love him.  
But right now, that is all you know.  
~~~  
You can’t help smiling.  
It’s enraging him, and what’s more, it’s confusing him, but you’ve never been so happy.  
The sky is collapsing in a frenzied tumult of broken glass and shrieking metal, and his tireless arm is battering you with the strength of a ten-ton truck. It feels like the world ending. It feels like your skull will cave in.  
And still, through the glass-dust and explosions going off around you, you smile like a madman at the murderer.  
You’re done. You win. It’s finally over. Above you this stranger, your friend, mutters about his mission, and, and yours is done. Around you, the ships drop from the sky slowly, titanium giants dead-set on destroying themselves.  
The world is safe, for a little while, at least.  
So you can finally rest. You can stop fighting him. You can free him from the wreckage, and smile at him even as he hammers your face in. Yes, if you don’t get out soon, you’ll probably die. Yes, if he keeps hitting you like this, you’ll probably die.  
The truth is you died seventy years ago when your plane hit the water.  
No.  
The truth is you died seventy years ago, when he fell off that train.  
When they pulled you out of the ice, no one ever asked you if you wanted to be saved.  
Maybe, if they had asked, you would have said no.  
You’re tired. Almost a century of sleep and still, you’re tired. Making decisions and doing what’s right. Being a hero. Saving the world.  
God, you’re so tired of having to save the world.  
This time, though, it looks like you won’t last to save it again. Look, he’s even stopped hitting you, though that tortured grimace on his face makes you wince. The happiness brightens within you even as blood wets your face.  
All this time you’ve been alone, you’ve been stranded. Stuck as little more than a relic, and what’s less relatable than a museum piece? This face, though, is the music that takes you back to the summer you were seventeen. This face you can reminisce too.  
Remember when you were kids and dreamed about going to war? As if war was ever something to dream about. Back before you’d seen death and blood and crawled through the wreckage, before the weight of countries ever strained your shoulders. When he sat on the steps with you outside your empty apartment and you talked about being heroes together. Remember that?  
You never dreamed you would be monsters, you never dreamed of being on opposite sides. It sounds like a riddle you might’ve asked in grade school.  
When is a monster not a monster?  
Oh. When you love it.  
When you used to fight at each other’s sides.  
His fingers are loosening now and little earthquakes rattle the surface beneath you. Not much time left, and you’d love to see him recognize you, you’d love to see the pained confusion in those brown eyes clear into the man you know. Even now, it’s seeing double. Blink once and long, greasy hair gives way to his military buzz-cut, kind-eyed grin. Shut your eyes and open once more: there he is in all his tortured glory. Both of you zombies. Both of you ghosts. Both of you are better off in the pages of yellowed newspapers. You don’t belong in this day and age.  
Memory is returning to him, like flashes of summer lightning, you can tell. It’s too bad the epiphany won’t come fast enough. Shock loosens his grip, and you feel yourself begin to fall.  
It’s all right. The water below waits with open arms to welcome you into her depths. Cleanse the blood off you. Cool your burning skin. Slow your pounding heart.  
It will be the second time waves have closed over your head.  
This time, you want it to be the last.  
A shuddering groan and the ship gives way beneath you, a feeling like the ending of the world. Peace. One last, long stare at the lone silhouette of the only man on the ship. The figure stares at his hands as if he doesn’t recognize them, as if they’ve betrayed him, and you choose to believe that he wishes he hadn’t let you fall.  
Then, you close your eyes, so you can be sure that his face will be the last thing you ever see.


End file.
